What would you give up to stay home?

iVillage Member
Registered: 08-08-2004
What would you give up to stay home?
1422
Sat, 08-05-2006 - 8:36am

Hi everyone.

I have always said that staying home is so important to me that I would give up many things to be able to do that. We live in a very small home, I have no jewelry and we buy all our clothes at Walmart. I know that if I went back to work, we could afford more. But I would never trade being at home for a larger house or more luxuries.

However, after reading this board I have started to suspect that there are things I would not want to give up. If I couldn't send my kids to preschool a couple of hours a day, if I couldn't afford any after school activities like ballet lessons or if I could'nt afford any kind of summer program for them, I think I would have to find a way to go back to work. So basically, I'm perfectly happy to deny myself "things." But I would not want to take much away from the kids.

Of course I would probably have to find a new career becuase I could never work the 80 hours a week my old career entailed.

Lilypie Baby Ticker

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Avatar for mom34101
iVillage Member
Registered: 03-27-2003
Sun, 08-13-2006 - 2:15pm
Well, actually, again you're being inconsistent. You've claimed many times that it's much more convenient to work when kids are little and much more inconvenient to work when kids are school-aged. Yet most sahms sah when the kids are little and go back to work when the kids are in school. If it were just about convenience, they'd be working when the kids were little--like you did--and sah during the school years when it becomes inconvenient.
Avatar for mom34101
iVillage Member
Registered: 03-27-2003
Sun, 08-13-2006 - 2:22pm
Yes, there are a lot of poorly-prepared people out there. What makes you think they are more likely to be sahms or former sahms?
iVillage Member
Registered: 07-26-2006
Sun, 08-13-2006 - 2:33pm
I didn't say that women don't leave. However statistically women aren't the ones walking away from marriages, and families.
iVillage Member
Registered: 04-27-2005
Sun, 08-13-2006 - 2:52pm
I totally understand the more laxniess (a word??!!) back then as I remember walking up to the store around 10 and going to my friends house blocks away all the time. Now I would be very leary letting my daughter do the same and we live in the same house. It is just a different time.
iVillage Member
Registered: 04-27-2005
Sun, 08-13-2006 - 2:53pm
I don't think with the way the world is will parents go back to the lax attitude of the 70's. It is just different now.
iVillage Member
Registered: 04-27-2005
Sun, 08-13-2006 - 2:54pm
How old are they though? The op was talking about being 7 or 8 years old. That is too young in my opinion.
iVillage Member
Registered: 06-02-2006
Sun, 08-13-2006 - 3:02pm

Food for thought....

http://www.nichd.nih.gov/publications/pubskey.cfm?from=nrp

From the "Put reading first" brochure, published by The Parnership for Reading, a collabrative effort of the NIFL (National Institure for Literacy) and the NICHD (National Institute for Child Health and Human Development) and the US Dept of Education

"Make reading part of every day"

1 - Share conversations with your child over meal times and
other times you are together. Children learn words more
easily when they hear them spoken often. Introduce new and
interesting words at every opportunity.

2 - Read together every day. Spend time talking about stories ,
Pictures, and words .

3 - Be your child’s best advocate. Keep informed about your
child’s progress in reading and ask the teacher about ways
you can help.

4 - Be a reader and a writer. Children learn habits from the
people around them.

5 - Visit the library often. Story times, computers , homework
help, and other exciting activities await the entire family.

Somebody must of forgotten to tell them that these things dont matter, and that ownership of books is more important!

Silly ole' me will keep on reading to my kids, taking them to the library and letting them see me read. Dont worry about us though, we do actually own some books too, so the kids should still turn out ok ;>

iVillage Member
Registered: 01-06-2006
Sun, 08-13-2006 - 3:29pm

That is not what I said. Kids need good care in the early years but that's about it. They need a good environment that is age appropriate but it really doesn't matter who is providing their care so long as the care is decent. Short of providing a bad environement or bad care, you're not going to see much difference in kids. While you can mess them up, during this time, with poor care the converse is not true. They do not turn out better based on varying degrees of good care. Care is either bad or good -- harmful or not harmful. This just isn't a time to sweat the small stuff. You just make sure the overall structure is in place and let nature take it's course.

I'm quite certain the early years are not the critical ones if there are critical ones (we are assuming good care regardless of what year it is). My brother was 8 when our mother died. He doesn't remember her at all and has none of her mannerisms, morals or anything else. In fact, his morals are quite unlike hers. They're more like dads.

Mom was very religous and believed in taking care of others. She had strong moral convictions about things like drinking, premarital sex, etc, etc.... My little brother doesn't do religion. He considers anything go as long as it's between consenting adults and no one gets hurt. He'll even take risks there as he's had a few DUI's. Where is mom's influence if the first five years were so critical? Mom worked with him daily on his studies to teach him the importance of an education. He dropped out of high school in the 10th grade. None of the things she wanted for him and tried to teach him came to fruition.

Looking back at my own past, I see no influence from the various DCP's I had nor do I see any influence of the fact that I wasn't in what would be considered good child care by today's standards. I see lots of influence of my mom on my teen years but even that waned as I god older an decided to rethink things, though I have held on to some of her morals and I got the message that education was important as well as working hard and taking care of yourself.

Yes, a lot of development takes place in the early years, however, it takes place regardless of whether or not mom works and regardless of who provides care for a child. Kids don't turn out differently because they went do day care or because they were home with a SAHM during these years. Yes, they learn a lot but all you need for that to happen is a good environment. I won't say the right environment because there are many right environments. There are many good caregivers. Young children really just need a decent environemnt and good care to develop normally.

Even in the pre-teen/teen years I don't expect to have a whole lot of influence. My aim is to keep my kids in school, off of drugs and away from sex long enough to get them started on the path to adulthood. I'll fight to keep them from falling into emotional traps at an early age but they may choose those paths for themselves as adults and that's their choice. I'm just needed while they're too immature to be making such choices. So I keep the lines of communication open, know who their friends are and what their backgrounds are, where they are at all times and what they're, supposedly, doing. There's hell to pay if they're not doing what they're supposed to be doing and I check up enough that they get caught. I'll give them enough rope to hang themselves but I won't kick the stool out from under them just yet.

Parental influence in the early years is in the form of attitudes. Attitudes towards religion, each other, education, working for a living, men, women, whatever...but that is true regardless of moms working status. Parents don't seek our dcps who teach their kids the oppoisit of what they believe or even undermine what they teach their kids. We choose either neutral dcps or dcps who support the same values we do. SAH/WOH just don't make a difference in the early years. Heck, I'm not sure parents do outside of providing the basic environement and the structure that goes with it.

iVillage Member
Registered: 03-26-2003
Sun, 08-13-2006 - 3:33pm

You've lost your "SAH status" even if you WOH or WAH just a little bit.

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iVillage Member
Registered: 03-26-2003
Sun, 08-13-2006 - 3:34pm

"The more you make, the more you tend to spend."


Certainly some people, but I know a lot of people who bank raises instead of increasing their SOLs.

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